In most traditional programming languages, character strings are arrays of characters, and string processing is programmed with low-level array operations, such as indexing. In high-level string-processing languages, strings are treated at a higher conceptual level. Strings are first-class values in these languages, and most offer a rich set of operations that manipulate strings as atomic values. Examples include concatenation, substring identification, transformation, and pattern matching. This report surveys some of the past and present string-processing and their facilities that deal with strings. Included are brief descriptions of Comit, the SNOBOL languages, and Icon. This report will appear in the third edition of the Encyclopedia of Computer Science and Engineering, to be published by Van Nostrand Reinhold.

This technical report has been published as

"String Processing Languages." Ralph E. Griswold and David R. Hanson, Encyclopedia of Computer Science, editor A. Ralston, 3rd edition, Van Nostrand Reinhold, NY, 1992.